


Vena Amoris

by searching4neverland



Series: Daybreak Tales [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, no red wedding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-09 15:56:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6913690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/searching4neverland/pseuds/searching4neverland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon’s smile was tentative, but he did not treat her with coldness. She could understand his confusion: he did not recognize the half-sister he had known in this creature that stood before him now. She wanted to tell him to stop trying. The past was gone. Too many things had buried it. Now they were alive, they were together, and they were in Winterfell.</p><p>In the face of the magnitude of that, of something she had thought impossible for so long, everything else faded away.</p><p>“Welcome home, Jon.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. you said were coming (to take me home)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: this story is set in ‘Summer Eyes’ universe. The first few chapters are excerpts from that story between Jon and Sansa. I haven't worked on that story for a long time but i wanted to write a bit more about them.  
> You don’t need to read the full story – here’s what’s going on, basically: Six years have passed since the start of the war, to this moment right here, where the story is happening. (I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense but bear with me) Sansa was in King’s Landing all that time. There was no Red Wedding – Robb married Roslyn. Instead, attempt was made on his life but he survived. He was betrayed by the Boltons, but he found out. Rosyn died some time after giving firth to a daughter.  
> The war was pretty much at an impasse, with Stanis coming for King’s Landing and Robb heading for the westerlands to concur them. So the Lannisters compromised with the North by exchanging Sansa and separation of the kingdoms, for peace and a marriage to unite their houses. [Myrcella/Robb]  
> 'Summer Eyes' is the Robbcella tale. This one is Sansa and Jon's.

He is all dressed in heavy black furs and with an equally inky mop of  curls on his head… But even as worn as he looks, even with that dark beard covering half his face, Sansa cannot miss it: she knows him. He is still her brother; even though he has changed so much since she last saw him. She knows him from the heart. She has never forgotten his face, how could she – it was her father's face; and even if it had not been, she has always had her dreams to remind her of it.

But Jon Snow is not Eddard Stark. He is only Jon Snow. Always himself.

How she had missed him! Without even knowing him that well anymore, she had missed him.

She knows the secret now. A secret people have died to protect… one that her _father_ took to the grave with him. Robb told her as soon as he could, and it had been of such importance that he had taken her alone in the woods, with Nymeria and Greywind patrolling around them, assuring no living thing with ears could heard them for miles. He had told her _everything_ … and then Sansa had floored him by telling her that she already suspected parts of it. She’d told him of her dreams and other things she was capable of… and her brother had looked at her as if he had just found something precious. As if he’d never seen her before. Half awed by it, half dreading it.

Sansa had looked into his eyes, and known what it was that had brought him to speechlessness.

“Did you think you were alone Robb? That none of us could do what you did?”

She knew of his wolf dreams. When he had accepted who he was with a bit of resignation to it, he had also learned to master them. But why had he felt so lonely with that secret? Had Arya not told him that she too could see through Nymeria's eyes? That she dreamed of hunting and killing with her? _In_ her. Had he not understood Rickon's closeness with Shaggy for what it was?

He was _not_ alone. He never had been; none of them were. Not even Sansa, though Lady had been long dead.

Sansa had taken her brother’s hand then.

“We are all the same, _all_ of us. We are the wolf’s blood.”

“We’re _wargs_ , Sansa.” He’d said gravely and Sansa had felt like laughing. He said it as if it was such a bad thing. It was not.

“Yes, we are. We are what tales are made of. Is that not _wonderful_?”

And she truly thought so. It _was_ wonderful.

In the Red Keep, where she had been captive for years, that knowledge had been something that belonged to her alone and nobody could take it away. It had been her secret, her weapon. One that she had honed carefully and alone, without anyone’s guidance.

It was a gift. Sansa had always seen it that way; one that she had used to save and to kill. Even when silks hung on her as heavy as chains, she had found a bit of freedom in the nature that her blood afforded her.

They spoke of wargs with fear in the South. Sansa had liked that. She had liked it very much.

And she was reminded of it now as she looked at Jon Snow ride in the courtyard of Winterfell. Of a dream she had had years ago. A dream of ice and snow, cold sharp enough to reach beneath her fur. A dark room and a pale man on a table. And how he had been dead one moment and awake the next.

A miracle... when she’d though none were left to be had.

She stares at him now, and her eyes fog over with tears. He is alive and he is home. They are all home again.

A miracle...

Arya came out running and jumped in his arms with such strength that she almost send them both toppling down. Sansa followed her with a step as hurried as she could make it, without outright running herself. She stayed a little behind as Jon and Arya embraced and spoke over one another, hasty and laughing and with tears shining but unshed in both their eyes, as they looked each other over.

She waited for him to look up and see her. When he did, she smiled at him with every ounce of her happiness.

His face froze.

“Hello Jon.”

His shock lasted for a blink or two. Her name on his lips sounded almost like a question, as if he did not recognize her. He had looked at her strangely, looked at her face as if he was searching for something. Sansa knew what he was looking for. Her mother had looked at her that way as well, Robb too: as if they knew her and yet did not. As if she was herself, and yet not. Sansa had stopped wearing her feelings inside out for all to see a long time ago, but there was something her family saw and none other could. Or rather, something they did _not_ see. They searched for the girl they had once known in her face, in her eyes, and were surprised to see that most of that girl was gone.

Jon was looking for that girl too… and found a stranger in her stead. Sansa did not think he would mind much. After all, the girl she had once been had not loved Jon Snow half so well as Sansa loved him now, if only from memories and the sake of their shared blood.

Sansa stepped close to him and, ignoring better sense, she hugged him same as Arya had, though not quite so enthusiastically. Jon stood frozen, she could feel the uncertainty off him as if it were heat.

“I have missed you, brother.” She spoke softly, without letting go of him.

And just as she said the words, a shaky breath went out of him, and Sansa felt arms come around to hold her – with hesitation at first, and then, once she held him closer and did not let go as he perhaps thought she might, his embrace tightened and she was almost lifted off her feet. It made her want to smile and it made her eyes sting with tears at the same time.

It lasted a moment, but she held him close and thought of all those nights in the Red Keep, for months on end, when thoughts of him had been her only comfort. When she had thought she had been the only Stark left living, thoughts of her half-brother at the Wall had been her last comfort. Her only reason to endure and keep living when all hope seemed lost.

Now he was here and they were together.

Sansa laughed with unexpected happiness as she pushed back and looked at him, his face between her hands. Those eyes that were grey as steel and so familiar.

Jon’s smile was tentative, but he did not treat her with coldness. He took his cue from her, she realized, and would accept her warmth as he would have probably accepted it had she held a different demeanour. If she had not thought of him fondly enough before, she certainly would have loved him for that alone. But she could understand his confusion: he did not recognize the half-sister he had known in this creature that stood before him now. She wanted to tell him to stop trying. The past was gone. Too many things had buried it. Now they were alive, they were together, and they were in Winterfell.

In the face of the magnitude of that, of something she had thought impossible for so long, everything else faded away.

“Welcome home, brother.”

x

If he were able, Jon would keep his eyes on his brothers and sisters without risking blinking them closed. It still seemed almost unreal that he was even there, let alone with them again.

But it was not unreal. It was truth. After so many years, he was back with his first family again.

Arya was the same, and yet different. She was grown, and there was darkness lurking in her eyes, just there at the corner. Jon knew that too. As they ate together and Jon looked at her face, he found himself collecting their similarities yet again. He had always done that. He and Arya had shared that special bond because they looked the same: out of all their family, they looked like Starks, with their black curls and long faces and eyes of grey steel. As Jon looked at her now, he wondered... had his mother, who all said Arya resembled so, looked like this? Had Lyanna Stark had those same untameable curls about her snow-pale face, like Arya? Had she had the same sharp mouth, the same piercing eyes, made unsettling, surrounded as they were by black lashes and a proud brow?

He could not look at himself and imagine his mother’s face, even though he had apparently inherited all of her colouring, but he could look at Arya and see Lyanna... same as Ned Stark had.

It was perhaps strange in the light of all he knew now, but Jon still thought of Ned Stark as his father. He was the only father Jon had ever known. But he wondered now, if it had been only Jon that Ned Stark saw ( _and loved_ ) when he looked at the little boy Jon had once been.

“Do I have something on my face?” Arya snaps and Jon blinks at her in surprise.

His sister frowns at him. “You keep staring.”

Jon smiles at her. “I have missed you.”

Arya’s frown softens and her eyes warm up. She doesn’t say anything, but then again she doesn’t need to.

“And besides, you’ve grown quite beautiful. I don’t think anyone will be calling you horse-face anytime soon.”

There it was, that familiar scowl.

“Shut up!” His sister hissed, even though not with quite as much bite as Jon knew she was capable of.

Jon chuckled and it was pure luck that the piece of bread Arya threw at him didn’t end up on his forehead. Or perhaps not. Arya’s aim was deadly accurate these days, he doubted luck had much to do with it.

His little sister had changed. There was more to her now, more knowledge of the world sharpening her gaze. Robb had told him some of it and he could imagine the rest himself. But in times of play like right then, she was the same as ever: she was the Arya he had known  and had loved. He was the sister he had always cherished, even when he wore black at the Wall and was not supposed to have sisters.

Sansa on the other hand… Sansa was another matter.

Jon admitted that he had not recognised her for herself at all the first moment he saw her in the courtyard. She was tall and elegant and stunningly beautiful, and only in the next couple of blinks had she become Sansa – the girl who used to call him half-brother. The more time they spent together, the less did Jon recognise that child in this young woman. She might as well have been a different person wearing his sisters face. (… _but though he had not known the young woman that greeted him so warmly, Ghost had. He had run circles around her before allowing himself to be petted by Sansa and Arya both as if he were a pup, and not a direwolf the size of a small horse. Jon had been astounded; Ghost had never been one for too much friendliness and he never allowed anyone to touch him, or arms would start coming off. And yet he’d played with his sisters unlike ever, even with Jon, and his littler mates as well, raising so much ruckus I the yard that they had had to set them loose in the godswood_.)

She’d called him brother with a smile on her face, as if it was natural, as if she always had loved him the same. Despite his stunned reticence, she treated him with warmth and kindness and a freedom that Jon would have never expected from the Sansa who used to avoid his company wherever she could, following her mother’s example.

He realized his idiocy soon enough. Jon so readily noticed the change in Arya, but not in his other sister. Who knew what she had had to endure, what she had had to live through. He did not know what had brought to such a different way of thinking and being. It was testament to her true strength that she had not allowed gentleness and kindness to be taken from her.

She was stronger than him, it seemed. It made him look at her with new eyes.

That night, when they gathered in their father’s solar, now Robb’s she had come to sit at his side, and asked him a question that had astounded him thoroughly.

“Tell me Jon, is it true that Janos Slynt died at your hands?”

Jon turned to look at her so quickly that his neck almost hurt from it. Her words had been spoken as softly as always, but he had not expected someone so... so... well, someone who looked and acted like such a perfect lady to be asking of executions, for one. But also because she had asked in the same manner she had enquired if he would like some more venison stew at dinner.

Perhaps it was a good thing that he did not hold any preconceptions of her anymore. He doubted a single description would have fit her comfortably.

“I... he was executed for treason against his brothers.” Jon said then, after he had a moment to swallow his surprise.

Sansa gave him a small smile, one he had never seen on her face before. It was one sided, painting a dark sort of satisfaction on her face. There was something sharp about her whole countenance then, an unforgiving and hard thing just beneath her skin.

“I’m glad.” She said... and she looked it. “Did you hang him?”

Jon could not imagine why she wanted to know, but he knew better than to ask that.

“No. I took his head myself. It was years ago.”

That sharp smile on his sweet cousin's face – the cousin that insisted on calling him brother though she must know he was not, and never had been – made Jon frown a tiny bit. He saw her anew, and saw the changes in her as well, now that she allowed her face to show them.

Jon looked at Robb for guidance, but his brother's face was grim and Arya's angry. In the end it was Sansa herself that explained.

“He betrayed father, you see. He was one among many, undoubtedly.” And Sansa's so bright and pure face now darkened considerably. “But he was the one who, by denying him assistance made father's arrest and execution that much faster. And when they brought father to Baelor’s steps, it was Janos Slynt that threw him to his knees, without shame, for his head to be taken.”

Sansa's piercing eyes turned to him and in the firelight they seemed paler somehow, their clear blue made cold by a patient hatred that made them glitter like stars.

“I have been wanting Janos Slynt dead for a long time, brother.” she said by way of explanation.

Jon had not known all this when he had had to execute Janos Slynt. He had done what he had done because it was the law of the Black Brothers and it was his duty as their Lord Commander. And he had taken Janos Slynt's head instead of hanging him, because he was a child of the North and his only father had raised him to know that you had to look a man in the eye if you wanted to take his life, and that if you could not do that, perhaps the man did not deserve to die. Janos Slynt had deserved to die.

He explained that to Sansa as best as he could – it was not a difficult thing to explain, but her eyes unnerved him. He knew that she listened attentively, as did Robb and Arya. Just as he knew that it changed nothing for her. Janos Slynt to her was a man that had to die, not for betraying the Night's Watch, his vows and his brothers, but for betraying Ned Stark. She did not seem to care why he’d been killed as long as he was dead.

Jon was glad though, that he had not known at the time... because he knew he would probably have felt the same way as Sansa did, and that would have made it harder for him.

When he was done speaking, Sansa did something that surprised him even more though. She took his hand – the scarred one, where hot metal had singed when he had pulled Longclaw out of a burning wight’s corpse and saved Old Bear’s life. A scar from a lifetime ago.

“How did you get this?” she asked softly. There was something in her tone that made Jon think she already knew the scar was there even though she couldn’t possibly.

Jon told her.

He told them all many of the things he’d seen and done, but always of the time before he was stabbed and left for dead. He felt weary of speaking of that time. He told them of the north beyond the wall instead. Of the wildlings and their ways, the strange animals and the wargs that commanded them.

He told them of himself and Ghost, the connection they shared as well. He knew he was safe as he did so. He was among family, but more than that, he was among those like him. He saw Arya nod and didn’t need to see Robb’s face to know that he too could do the same.

They were not just wargs: they were one with their wolves, their souls recognised each other. They were a pack.

And then he looked at Sansa and remembered that one of their litter had been killed the moment it had left the north’s borders. Lady had been the first to die. Her bones had come back to Winterfell before Sansa ever made it to the Red Keep. Jon wondered, in that moment, if his sister felt the emptiness of a connection severed. He knew he had; when he and Ghost had been separated by the wall Jon had felt as if a part of himself had been left behind.

By the look in Sansa’s face when their eyes met, she knew exactly what he was thinking. Her sad little smile told him all he needed to know.

“It’s why they are so affectionate with me.” Sansa said and Jon immediately knew what she meant. “They know I’ve been lonely without Lady.”

And perhaps it was true. Their direwolves were not overly affectionate unless they were playing with each other. But with Sansa they were different. Nymeria resting right at Sansa’s feet was proof of it. Ghost’s particular affectionate behaviour with his sister was proof of it. Even Shaggy was better-behaved around Sansa.

“I am like you as well… but different, I suppose.” Sansa started, answering the unspoken question. From the look of immediate interest in Robb’s face and the sharpening of Arya’s attention, Jon knew that they had not heard this one before.

“So you are a warg.” Arya stated, as if to confirm it. “But…”

“I never had dreams of seeing through Lady’s eyes, no.” Sansa said, drily almost… and Jon knew that come hell or high water, Sansa would never forgive Cersei Lannister for killing her direwolf. “But I had other kinds of dreams.”

She looked into the flames, as if the answer was there. The dancing fire played across her pale skin and it made her hair look as they were flames too… or blood. Her expression was so set thought that it made her skin look as hard as porcelain and just as smooth.

“There was a time when all I wanted, all I could _think_ of, was how to escape. The thought consumed me. At night I had dreams about flying high into the sky, seeing King’s Landing getting smaller and smaller as I flew away, chasing the northern wind.” Sansa closed her eyes as if she could see it even now. “They were beautiful dreams. I away woke up surprised that I didn’t have wings on me, so real they felt…” She contemplated that thought with a small frown crinkling the space between her brows. “Perhaps I started with birds because everyone in the Red Keep loved mocking my captivity by calling me ‘little bird’, or ‘little dove’ or all such nonsense. I don’t know.”

“Perhaps it was because you wanted wings to fly away.” Jon murmured… even though not for a moment could he believe those were normal dreams that Sansa had been having.

Sansa gave him a smile, a true one this time, not one that could cut glass.

“Yes, perhaps.” She said softly. “There was a canary I had in a cage in my room. I opened its door one day; I wanted it to be free, so at least one of us could have what we wanted… but it wouldn’t get out. It just stayed there, in its cage, not even trying to fly away.” And as she spoke her anger seemed to spark and take life. “It almost made me want to throw that cage from the top towers, bird be damned. I couldn’t understand why it did not want to get out.”

Jon _did_ understand. He did not interrupt his sister though.

“I dreamt myself in a cage that night. I could see my room, and myself in my bed, asleep. I saw the open door o the cage, and I flew out. Out and way, higher and higher until the air was so cold I felt my heart would stop. When I woke I knew these were not just dreams.” Her eyes burned as blue as the hottest part of flame when they met Jon’s, her smile made her look fierce. “The canary was gone the next morning.”

“Can you do it with other animals?” Arya immediately asked, seemingly enchanted by her sisters tale the way she never had been when they’d been children.

“It’s easier with birds. I can slip myself into even five or six or them at the same time but not for long.”

Jon almost sputtered in surprise. “Five or six?!”

 “Yes.” Sansa said calmly. “Does that mean I’m good at it?”

Jon was almost speechless. Almost.

“Yes, I would think so. The best skinchanger I have ever met could only control three animals at a time, and they all fought his influence.”

His question was implicit. The way Sansa’s smile widened, answered him.

“My birds don’t fight me. I know how to pick them. I used to keep a small flock in the Red Keep. Nobody cared about birds. I raised them and they knew me.”

Jon was shocked to say the least… not by the extent of his sister’s ability, even though it was amazing, but by her _comfort_ with it. The general opinion south of the wall, the opining he had been raised with ( _and Sansa even more so, because the stories only grew more frightening the further south one heard them, and Sansa had heard them from her septas and her mother_ ) was that wargs were dark, dangerous creatures. Monsters to be feared. Shifters of skin and stealers of souls. It was perhaps why it had taken him such a long time to recognise the bond he had with Ghost, or rather, its nature. He knew Robb had had the same problem. They had both fought it in the beginning, not wanting feel as if they were half animals.

Jon had had the wildlings to teach him better, and Robb had learned to trust Greywind’s intuition as much as he trusted himself during the war, because it had saved his life when nothing or nobody else could have. Arya had loved Nymeria too much to ever think her wolf would lead her astray ( _and perhaps been much more comfortable with her dark and wild side than any of her brothers and sisters to care_ ).

Who had Sansa had?

“You speak of it as if you’re…” but Jon did not know how to continue.

“She sees it as a gift, Jon.” Robb said with a small smile that did not reach his eyes.

Sansa’s eyes were serious.

“It _is_ a gift.” She said, her voice strong and sure. “It’s rare and its precious and admit it or not, it has saved our lives. Your wolves protect you, don’t they? They _are_ you, you are them. You are one.”

“We are not. We are however… complementary, if you will. And even that was hard to see at first.” Robb admitted. “I didn’t want to be a wolf. I am a man, not a beast.”

Sansa only rolled her eyes at that.

“We _are_ animals: _we_ are the wolves of winter.” She said, such steel in her voice that it took them all aback for a moment.

None of them expected such strength of conviction, such loyalty to her northern heritage, from the sister who, out of all of them had been the most southern, both in breeding and inclination. But Sansa had been hte one that had lived the last six years of her life surrounded by Lions and other southern animals. Perhaps out of them all, she had been the one to hold on most tightly to the Stark within her, to survive them.

“There is a reason the direwolf is the sigil of our hosue. There was a _reason_ you found those pups years ago, Robb, and a reason we kept them. They were _meant_ for us and I have never seen them as anything but a gift from the gods. And so is our ability to through their eyes.”

Robb smiled softly.

“You sound just like mother.” He said.

Sansa raised her chin at him. “That’s because she is right.”

Jon anxiety spiked. She was not aware at all of the risks of it, was she?

“It _is_ a gift.” He said, drawing her attention. “But it’s also very dangerous, Sansa.”

He hadn’t even noticed she had yet to let go of his hand. He only noticed when she put her other hand on top of his.

“You remember how Lady was so gentle and well behaved, how all our wolves seem to have some of us in them. The bond was so strong that this happened even before we started seeing through their eyes. By warging we take some on _them_ in _us_ as well.” He needed to impress the importance of this on her. He didn’t want to lose her to her birds. ... They’d just found each other after all. “And if their influence is not controlled, you can lose yourself to them.”

Sansa was suspiciously still and quiet as she listened.

“Yes I know that.” She said in a frail whisper… and Jon felt his heart skip one beat in every three. Robb straightened on his seat and Arya looked at her sister with suspicion.

Sansa gulped before she answered, wringing her hands in her lap for a moment.

“I… when I found out what I could do… it was all I spent the day doing. I grew thin and sick, and could hardly tell what was real and what was not. All I wanted was to fly.”

She shook her head, as if the memory was too much to bear and Jon was reminded of Haggon’s words. That birds can be very tempting, but one forgets about the mundane things of life if one enters them too often, and gives themselves up to the flight.

“You don’t seem so off your rocker to me.” Arya said flatly, looking at her sister in an appraising manner, so frank that Sansa laughed. “Well, not more than usual, that is.”

“I’m fine now. I got over it.”

“How?” Jon asked immediately. He had heard it was impossible to go back once you started losing yourself to the animals you possessed.

Sansa’s eyes flattened and her smile turned bitter as she looked from his face to Robb’s… and suddenly Jon knew.

“They told me you were dead. That you and mother had been killed in Riverrun. I already thought Arya dead. Word of Rickon and Bran had come some weeks before that. All my family was gone. I felt hopeless then and was convinced I wanted to die… that is, until I remembered how to be angry.”

Sansa’s eyes hardened as she remembered what that desolation had felt. Jon knew exactly the feeling: he’d felt it too. The powerlessness had almost driven him mad and the grief had been like nothing he had ever known.

“It shocked me into my body I think. Into reality. I wanted to kill them all. I still do really…”

Sansa’s words, the utter unimpressed way she spoke them, made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. There was no doubt in Jon’s mind that she meant them.

“I dreamt about you when I fell asleep that night, Jon.” Sansa said then. “I saw you, all dressed in black standing on top of the wall. It was dark and you were looking at the abyss. Those scars you have there-” Her fingers skimmed his cheek, the marks left by the eagle that had attacked him a lifetime ago. “They were fresher than they are now, red still. You were angry… and sad.”

Jon gulped down his words, his feelings.

“I think I saw you through Ghost. It felt that way.” Sansa added then, softly as if she was not sure of it herself. “I think he allowed me in, because he knew I was so scared and in such pain. And he wanted to show me that I was not so alone after all.”

Jon didn’t even know where to begin.

“How is that possible?” that was the first question he thought to ask. Sansa shrugged, helpless but unrepentant.

“I don’t know. You were the only family I thought I had left. I fell asleep thinking about you. It felt as if I needed to see you more than I needed my next breath… so I suppose I got my wish…”

Jon felt as if his ribcage was too small for his hear in that moment, but even that could not distract him from what he knew to be true: what she was speaking of was supposed to be impossible.

“I don’t know how it happened.” Sansa said then, preceding his questions, Robb’s and even Arya’s. She looked at them in the eye one after the other. “I don’t know how or why, I cannot control it.”

“Once I knew Robb and mother were still alive and Arya was said to have been taken by the Ramsey Snow, I tried warging into Nymeria. It’s true what you say Jon, there are pieces of all of you in your wolves. I thought… I wanted to know if that was really Arya, and I reckoned if anyone could know, it would be Nymeria.”

But from the way Sansa spoke of it, Jon knew not to expect anything good.

“They told me I did not wake for two days, even though when I was in her, it felt not more than a few hours. I have not tried it since.”

They were all left speechless, but not for long.

“Didn’t you warg into the birds anymore?” Arya asked then, detracting them from the silence of shock that Sansa had left behind.

“Yes, I did. I was more careful about it though.” Sansa added immediately, when two pair of reproofing eyes met hers. But then she started to smile.

Jon was starting to know this new smile of hers: it resembled Arya’s when she was about to make some mischief. Jon was stricken with the similarities between his sister in a way he never had been before.

“I didn’t want to dream anymore, I’d rather plan. I used the birds to spy on people. It got easier once I gave up on the whole flying away part. After that, it was a matter of using them as means to an end. Nothing more.”

But Jon was not so convinced. “You did not get sick anymore?”

“No. But then again, perhaps that’s because I did not want to run away anymore.” Sansa admitted with a careless shrug. “I wanted revenge.”

The way she spoke of it, the ease she had with the idea of it… Jon couldn’t say that he was entirely surprised. The steel in Sansa’s veins was visible to naked eye, if one paid attention, and Jon had been paying her al lot of attention that day. She was like a dagger wrapped in silk: the sharpness of her was just a breath away beneath the smoothness.

“You told me that you saw him.” Arya said then, directing her words to Sansa, with only a cursory look to Jon. “That you saw him that night... when he was dead and then he wasn’t.”

Jon looked from one sister to another. “You did?”

Sansa met his eyes and there was such tenderness there, such care. She smiled at him sweetly, even though her eyes started brimming with sadness and unshed tears.

“I did. I don’t know why it’s easier with Ghost. I suppose it’s really not, but it doesn’t hurt me.” She murmured... and her eyes went wide as she looks at him in both wonder and fear. “I saw the red woman clean your body, Jon. You were gone, I could feel it. Your heart would not beat… I howled and howled but you would not move.”

Jon’s heart picked up. Sansa held on to his hand so hard that her blunt nails had left marks, reminding him of where he was.

“And then, when the room was empty, you breathed again. And you were as alive as you are now.”

Jon remembered all too well. He remembered being thrust from nothingness into feeling again. The sharp stab of the cold licking at him without numbing him. That came later. He had not known what fear was until that moment.

Both his sisters and his brother were looking at him as though he held some secret, some unknown truth. He did not.

“I don’t know what happened or how. Or why. I have no answers.” Jon said simply.

They must already know that. He has told these exact words to Robb three years ago when they had met in the south: Robb after a battle, Jon leaving the Wall for what he’d thought had been forever.

He’d left the wall to join his brother, and found out that Robb had never been his brother after all.

Howland Reed had met him as if he’d known when exactly Jon would show up before him and given him a secret that he had been keeping for more than two decades. His mother’s name. One of the things Jon had wanted to know most in the world.

Ned Stark had always told him Jon had the wolf's blood in his veins and that was no lie. He had simply never mentioned where it came from and what the other half was.

For his own part, Jon had still trouble believing it. With Sansa sitting by his side, Arya laughing with him and Robb and Rickon, Jon thought perhaps he would rather not believe it. He’d rather keep this family, than ever exchange it for another.

“Did you see anything? After.”

Jon closed his eyes at Sansa’s question. He knew what she would have her say and perhaps it would be kinder of him to lie. But he didn’t want to.

He didn’t think any lie would slip past her anyway.

“I didn’t see anything.” He’d never said it as if it was a shameful confession before. He’d even learned not to be afraid of it. But he didn’t want to scare Sansa, or take away any hope she might have fo a kinder existence beyond death.

His sister had always believed in teh sweeter parts of tales. He should hate himself to take that way.

“But perhaps I didn’t because it wasn’t something meant for me. Perhaps for you it will be different.”

Sansa smile was small, her eyes at once sad and gentle.

“So kind. I knew I remembered it right. But you don’t have to make up stories for me Jon.” She looked at Arya and Robb and then turned to him. Her hand on his cheek was a surprise, but Jon couldn’t look away from her face when she spoke. “Maybe there was nothing there. Maybe death is just a void and there is no peace or hell. I don’t care. There’s something _here_.”

Jon had sometimes tried to convince himself of that. It had never quite taken hold until that moment.


	2. that water that swallows us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted this separately because, to be perfectly honest, I don't like this part that much and it feels pointless. I'll let you be the judge of it.

> " _There is a heart_  
>  _pumping at the center of it. So much_  
>  _submerged thunder._  
>  _Or a match burning_  
>  _between the pages of a book. Or a dove_
> 
> _with a pellet in its side, still_   
>  _flying, still_   
>  _wearing_   
>  _its feathered self around it, but_   
>  _undoing all memory_
> 
> _of flight_  
>  _as it flies_.”
> 
>  
> 
> FROM “PAIN PILL” BY LAURA KASISCHKE

“So, are you really a Targaryen then?”

Jon smiled at Arya’s bluntness.

“No, I don’t think so.” He was still the same Jon. That had not changed. He had fought hard for that not to change.

Arya rolled her eyes at him.

“Howland Reed does.” She bit back. “Can you burn?”

It was Jon’s time to look unimpressed. “Everyone can burn.”

“Not dragons.”

Jon wanted to tell her he was no dragon, but Sansa preceded him with something a bit more rational.

“Dragons burn too, Arya.” Sansa reminded her sister. It made sense that she would remember history better. She was always the more attentive student.

Summerhall and what had happened there was a tale everyone in the real knew. Sansa was right, Jon thought as he touched his scorched palm. Targaryens burned as easily as anyone else.

“Not according to Daenerys. According to her, fire cannot kill a dragon.”

Sansa scoffed. “I’ll believe the Dragon Queen of Meereen is unburnt when I see it. Until then, hers is just a tale, and  as mot tales, told to make her look and sound _more_ than she probably is.”

“You’re not our father’s son though.” Arya insisted, and Jon he knew enough of her to detect her irony. She sounded resentful as well. “You look nothing like a Targaryen. You look like father, you always have.”

“No. He looks like his mother.” Robb said calmly. “Howland Reed told us himself. He is Lyanna's son, and Rheagar's.”

Jon met his brother's eye and saw a twinkle there, of both sadness and amusement. A grim sort of resignation. Howland Reed had told them more than that. He had told them of a promise Ned Stark had made to his dying sister.

Jon could not forget what he had felt as the strange man he had never met, spoke with such reverence of a mother Jon had never known. And yet he had felt tears in his eyes when he heard how Lyanna had held on to her son – to _him_ \- how frightened she had been for his life and how her last breath and her last thought had been for him, his safety and his happiness.

In his dreams his mother had always looked at him with kindness. There was no doubt now that those dreams had not been just fantasies of a child. His mother had loved him, and now he no longer doubted it. For those short weeks Lyanna had survived giving him to the world, she had loved him fiercely. 

The little boy that had survived inside him against all odds couldn’t help but feel soothed knowing that.

“So... You're a Targaryen now?” She asked, looking at him with those familiar eyes of grey that were in that moment so dark they seemed almost black.

“I'm a Snow, Arya.” Jon responded, bitterns of his early years conspicuously missing from his tone now. “Still a bastard, no matter whose.”

“You don’t know that.” Sansa said, looking at him as if she was contemplating some important matter. “Targaryens saw noting strange in taking two wives, and there was half the kingsguard at the Tower of Joy with Lyanna. Father told us some of the story: Ser Arthur Dayne, Ser Oswell Whent and Lord Commander Gerold Hightower. And they had to have been there even before the battle of the Trident, because they were not in that battle, nor in King's Landing. Don’t you see, Jon?”

Jon really did not.  

“Rheagar deprived himself of half his guard to protect you and your mother. All that could not have been just to protect a lover and her child.” Arya said flatly. Sansa nodded.

Jon had heard that theory before. It did not convince him much. 

“That's just  speculation, Sansa.”

But Sansa did not seem to be listening. Her eyes were turned inwards, as if she was trying to remember.

“By the time father got to you, the children of the Mad King had already left for Essos and your were the only surviving son of the crown prince… and heir to the Iron Throne.”

There was twinge inside Jon whenever he heard those words spoken around him. he flinched from the idea as if one would from the touch to an open wound.

“I am a man of the Night's Watch. I have taken my vows twice, my place is at the Wall.”

But Sansa shook her head, as if to deny him.

“No, I was thinking... You see, I have been thinking more and more about father these days. And you remind me of him so much Jon.” There was infinite tenderness in her eyes as she said that, and such a sweet smile on her face that it stunned him into silence. “And it has been puzzling me, how he could have kept such a secret for such a long time. It must have weighted on him so heavily. But I think I know now why he did it, how he could never waver.”

Jon did not miss a word even though she spoke softly.

“He saw the bodies of the Targaryen children. Everyone knows the story in the Red Keep. Especially as they kept fortifying the city for a siege, the last few weeks. Elia and her children’s ghosts were everywhere.”

Jon knew the story too. There was not a soul in all seven kingdoms that did not.

“Tywin Lannister had them wrapped in red cloaks and how Robert looked at them and called them ‘dragonspawn’. Father was there as well, when this happened. And every time... _every time_ father would go in that room, his eyes would fall to that same spot in front of the throne and there would be a strange look on his face. I wonder now, if he still expected to see those bodies there every time he walked into that room.” Sansa's eyes were vacant, turned inward as she remembered, but when her focus did return, it was like a swish of a blade that pinned Jon where he was.

“I suppose imagining you in one of those red cloaks has always been his reason for holding such a secret from everyone. Even from you. And later, the threat of another war...” And then her question came, and it was like a slap – so honest it was. “Do you resent him Jon? For never telling you. For everything that it meant?”

Jon looked away with a sigh.

“I might have, once. I don't anymore.” He knew where he belonged now.

Sansa looked at him carefully, as if she was judging the truth in his words. Jon did not fret. It was no lie.

“I'm glad to hear that.” and her words almost sounded like thank you.

Sansa seemed to know better than to say those words out loud though, and Jon felt a rush of affection for her, and admiration for having understood so quickly. If he was to go on believing that they shared a father in heart, he could never accept being thanked for such a thing.

Arya got up quite suddenly and made for the door. It only too Jon saying her name to stop her though.

She did not turn as she spoke.

“You know, it’s great that you finally know who your mother is Jon. I am happy for you.” even though she sounded as anything but. “But I’m not going to pretend I love the idea of losing another brother when I just got you back. It's not fair, and I'm fucking angry and I'm not going to pretend.”

Jon got up and caught his sister by the shoulders, turning her to face him.

“You can't ever lose brothers once you make them, Arya. I think that is actually the one thing you can never lose, even when you want to.” He held her  shoulders more tightly and smiled down at her. She was so fierce and proud, his sister, and though she would rather scream than cry, he could see the beginnings of tears in her eyes. She would always have a compassionate soul, Jon knew that, even though she had been forced to grow stronger so fast.  “You will always be my sister and because of that, I will always be your brother. Right?”

She gave him a challenging stare, one that softened into hope when he did not flinch from her strength. A moment later she gave in and hugged him.

Neither of them saw the look Sansa and Robb exchanged and that smile that was almost identical on their faces.

It was a wonder to be home again... and together. Sansa looked out of the window where the snow kept on falling. It was not a storm and it would most likely stop by tomorrow, just in time for the wedding. But still, Sansa got up, opened the glass panel and let the cold air of the north envelop her in a chilly hug. She opened her mouth hoping to taste the snowflakes, just as she used to when she was a child.

They tasted familiar. Of innocence and childhood... of Winterfell.

 _'Winter has come, father_.' She thought as she opened her eyes and looked on the vast whiteness beyond. _'Finally, winter is here. It’s a time for wolves_.'


	3. like yesterday (when I was soft)

_the ocean of a body  
_ _the willing ache of the storm_  
like bones   
like sinew   
like all the bruises   
& midnight-blue veins   
like yesterday when you were here   
like yesterday when I was soft

_— Yesterday, Michelle Tudor_

He doesn’t even remember what they have ended up speaking of, but it must have bored Sansa silly, because decidedly _silly_ was the remark she made, so abrupt and disconcerting that it erased all memory of what had been happening beforehand.

“Jon, don’t you ever brush your hair?”

Jon turned to her, sitting by his side in the two-place sofa. His he was not the most expressive of men, and had grown even less so after he’d woken up on a cold table, but in that moment, his eyebrows were raised so high on his forehead, that they were making a try for his hairline…

He expected her to be joking, but he was too stunned to laugh. Once he got over it and his lips remembered to curve up, he understood hers had not been a jape at all. He saw that in the wicked grin Arya was sporting and in how Robb was rolling his eyes.

“Why are you looking at me like I’ve suddenly gone mad?” Sansa asks all so seriously, as if she has a mind to get an answer.

Jon knows not what to say, so he keeps his silence. But he’s so surprise when her hand reaches up and, as if nothing is ever the matter with it, brushes the ends of his unruly curls.

“No offence, but your head looks like a bird has gone and died on top of your head.” She tells him, one sharp eyebrow arching upwards, like the tart girl she used to be, a lifetime ago. ( _her eyes are smiling too much for him to believe she means it_ )

Arya snorts. “Don’t take it personally Jon, she’s been saying that to me for years.”

Easy for Sansa to comment on that, Jon thinks, when her own hair is smooth and shiny like liquid flame. Jon and Arya have more to contend with. Sometimes he feels as if his hair has a complete mind of its own. Not that he’s ever thought about it that way. The only reason why he ever cared about his hair is so that it wouldn’t get in is eyes.

When Sansa gets up with a serene smile on her face, Jon dismisses her strange outburst. He tries to pick up his discussion with Robb wherever they ad left it, but the strange thing is… he does not remember where that was.

But then Sansa comes back, armed with a brush and when he feels it tugging on his scalp, he jumps.

“Sansa… what are you doing?”

Her eyes are so perfectly innocent though, despite his voice having gone an octave higher at her antics. Robb is hardly bothering to hide his chuckles.

“Brushing your hair of course.” His sister says, amiable, sweet smile in place like armour against all doubt.

Jon can help but smile, even as wraps his hand around her wrist and pushes it away from his hair.

"I’m not one of your dolls, sister." he says indulgently. And how he likes the way the word rolls on his tongue. ‘ _Sister’_. It’s not true, but it sounds as warm as an endearment.

He had sisters again and it’s wonderful to think of them that way and have them both there with him. He is so happy about it that he doesn’t even fight so hard when Sansa brushes his hands with flutters of her long fingers, narrowing blue eyes at him with a smile - less sweet this time, more sure.

"I haven't played with dolls since I was three, Jon." she says, as if it’s meant to mean something to him.

"You best let her have her way. After all, when even Arya endures it..."

Robb's words hang in the air, as if Arya's enduring this is some kind of unspoken bar or patience between all of them. Knowing Arya's impatience for any kind of pampering, it really should be.

But then Jon remembered. It was what Sansa used to do once, a long time ago, for Bran and Rickon and even Robb, when he let him. She’d fix their hair and their clothes, practice dancing with her brothers, just to play. But she'd never done it for him. Now she wanted to, and Jon was not sure if he really wanted to tell her no. It felt like play should feel. It felt like indulging... because it took him less than a day to love who she was now.

And in truth, because her care is sweet and Jon hasn’t known tenderness in a very long time.

The kind of smile she gave him when he pulled his hands away and surrendered, made it worth it. It felt like a victory to make her smile that way, as if she was a child again.

Gods she'd changed so much... if she wanted to brush his hair like he was some silly little girl, or even a doll, who was he to deny her? Who was he to deny her anything?

Jon sighed and leans back in resignation.

"Oh, stop pouting." Sansa said with the singsong voice of her two and ten years, thoughtless laughter afterwards confirming it was a knowing jest.

"I don’t _pout_." Jon said gravely. He was the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch for gods' sake! …perhaps he brooded sometimes, but he most certainly did not _pout_.

"Yes, you do. And it looks adorable on you, does it not, Arya?" Sansa continues, making Robb burst out laughing.

“Sure.” Arya chirped, enjoying this too much for Jon’s comfort – but not enough for him to put up a fus.

"You should wave flowers in his pretty hair." Arya added, smiling wickedly. Jon filled his fist with a tiny pillow and threw it at her head. She ducked it with a laugh and made a face at him.

It would occur Jon only much later, in the silence of his own room, that he had smiled more that one night than he had in years and felt more at his ease too. His bones were heavy when he laid himself on the bed, but he could still remember the gentle pull of Sansa’s hands in his hair and the sound of Robb’s laughter, Arya’s needling. He fell asleep with thoughts of his family, and for once, he did not dream.


	4. your gift

> “ _I shall not entirely_  
>  _Sit emptied of beauties, the gift_
> 
> _Of your small breath, the drenched grass_  
>  _Smell of your sleeps, lilies, lilies._ ”
> 
>  
> 
> — SYLVIA PLATH, FROM “THE NIGHT DANCES”

A fortnight. Fourteen days in Winterfell and he was still stalling.

He felt like a fool, but he could not make himself move. He stood in front of the gates of the crypts, still and silent in the early hours of the morning and a dream that had haunted him for as long as he could remember still brushing the back of his neck light as a feather. He had been thinking about going down there for days, and still didn’t have the courage to walk those steps and go into that darkness that was no longer a dream.

Winterfell was no rubble now, no ruin. There were no bones in the stables, there were plenty of people around even so early.

This was no dream, this was real.

He had always known that there was something down there, in those crypts. Had his mother’s spirit been so disquieted that it had called to him, even after so long? Had she been angry that he’d never once gone to see her? Bring her winter roses, as his Ned Stark used to. A crown of winter roses for his dead sister…

_My  mother…_

Jon had spoken of her and asked of her; listened to others tell stories of her… but he had yet to go and pay his respects to her last resting place.

_Coward!_

Jon took a deep breath and descends those steps. Darkness enveloped him. He walked slowly down the halls. The Kings of Winter stare at him from their stone thrones, their swords in their laps. It wasn’t them he’d always dreaded. The flowers in his hand feel as sharp as if they had teeth. He had chosen on his own not to take a torch. He didn’t need one to know the way, and besides, it was not darkness either, that he had always feared.

His heart started to beat faster the closer he got. The thorns of the roses bit at him. But instead of screaming for anything or anyone as he always had in his dreams, instead of the darkness eating at him, he saw a small light piercing the shadows of the crypt, just there not too far from him.

 _This is not dream_ , he told himself. He was being fanciful,  as stupid as Arya always said he was. _This is real and its happening_ … and in the dream there had been no light waiting for him at the end of his walk, only the darkness of what he had never known and always feared. But he knew now. He knew what he was looking for, what pulled him here. _Who_ pulled him here.

And that light piercing the dark was no vision, but a single candle.

When he saw her, he thought it was lady Stark… but then she turned and though the long red hair was the same, Sansa’s face greeted him, tear streaked and frail with pain.

She smiled when she looked at him and wiped away the tears more gracefully than Arya ever would have, but with that same edge of anger, as if they were treasonous for even being there in the first place.

"Hello Jon." she said simply. "I'll leave you."

His words came so fast that it was moments before his mind had caught up with them

"No, stay. Please."

He didn’t want to be alone in here. And maybe the cold of the wall truly has addled his perception, but he really needs her to stay. He cannot believe that it means nothing that he found her here, precisely this day, in this hour.

Or maybe the truth was simpler. Maybe he did not want to be left alone with ghosts. Maybe he’d rather be by the side of someone who was unafraid to face the dark alone.

He looked at their father's crypt, where his bones were. Over the lid there were a dozen white roses and a long, wickedly sharp dagger resting among them. There was a stain of red on its blade.

He looked at Sansa, saw it in her eyes. Flowers and daggers, and blood on steel.

_‘I promise…’_

Jon extended a hand and she took it without the smallest hesitation. She walked with him, not too far - just a few steps away from lord Stark's resting place, to where his sister's statue stood.

Jon looked at the statue for a long time. Time flowed like a river around him. He didn’t noticed it passing. All he knew was his mother's face, those strong features cut in stone. A small smile on her lips, secretive, as if she knew something he did not.

What had she been like, he wondered? Would she be proud of him? Was she at peace, finally? He had dreamt of Winterfell's crypts often even after he came to know his parentage, and after that, the fear he'd felt of the unknown that called to him had changed. Jon did not scream in is dreams anymore.

He still woke up sweating though.

"They say that she was very beautiful." Sansa said in a whisper that echoed against the walls and his ears. He was grateful for the interruption.

Yes, Lyanna had been beautiful. Everyone said so. There were those who said that her beauty had torn apart a realm. Those that said her father and her brother had died for her beauty. That she was the woman who brought a dynasty of kings to ruin.

Had she been selfish? Had she left willingly, or had she been kidnapped? Had she loved, or was he the child of rape?

Which was worse?

Questions tormented him like a bed of thorns. Nobody could answer them. It was like screaming in the void – not even an echo came back.

"I think the reason Arya was is favourite as a girl was that she reminded him so much of her." Sansa said, her fingers tightening around his.

She spoke smiling. She was trying to soothe him, he realized… and it softened his heart to know her capable of it. His thumb made a small circle on the back of the hand he had been holding like it's a lifeline in the dark. His sisters were so different and so was the love they gave him. He adored them both for those differences.

"Remember how everyone always said that you looked so much like father?” he turned to look at her and she did too, their eyes meeting. “All people see when they look at you is Ned Stark's face. I think all _father_ saw when he looked at you was the sister he had loved."

Jon did not tell her that he has thought the same thing often. Instead he squeezed her hand tighter. Her other warm palm came to cover his. She leaned on his arm, wrapped her hand around his elbow, her head against his shoulder. Half an embrace. Jon wished he could open his mouth and say something like ‘thank you’, but it wouldn’t make sense.

"I could make a crown of those, if you like." she offers, softly. Gently.

Jon shook his head. "It’s alright." he finally said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears.

… he hadn’t even felt the tears leaving him, hadn’t noticed the wet descent down his cheeks.

Jon hadn’t thought himself capable of tears anymore, so he was too relieved to find he was wrong to be embarrassed that he’s shed them where Sansa could see them. He didn’t even mind. As she had felt safe enough with him to open and show him all the nuances of herself, so did he feel safe enough with her there, in the darkness of Winterfell’s crypts.

He laid the roses at his mother's feet.

His palm came away dotted with tiny red punctures, but it didn’t stay that way for long. Sansa took his hand and, with a piece of cloth that he had no idea where she found, she brushed the blood away. He looked away from his mother's face then.

She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at his hand, carefully dabbing away prickles of blood he could not even feel. She put the cloth away in her pocket, looked at him, eyes inscrutable. Her hands came up to his face then, to brush away the streaks his tears had made. Jon couldn’t fathom a softer gesture. Just as he couldn’t help the tired sigh that escaped him, the slump of his shoulders. The sadness that gnawed at him felt unbearable here among the ghosts of parents he never had. He'd rarely felt his loneliness so keenly.

So it was a blessing, a sign, truly, that the gods love him, when Sansa wrapped her arms around his middle and pulled him into an embrace as strong as her arms were able to make it. For the briefest moment Jon could not to recall what to do. It had been such a long time since anyone has held him, for the simple sake of just giving him comfort. But though the action was almost foreign, the emotion behind it shot though everything else… and it warmed him. So Jon let his arm hold her back. He let himself lean on her, pressing his face in her hair, the scent of pine and lavender coating his lungs on his next breath.

And there in the arms of comfort, he finally could breathe and not feel death or the past pressing their heavy boot on his chest. There were no questions pounding against his brain, about things he’d never know. There was only the comfort of someone who was willing to reach into his pain, take it off his shoulders and make it her own, just so that he wouldn’t have to bear it alone.

Jon held Sansa just a little bit closer, breathed her in once more and deeper, surrendering himself to that which was the scent of home and acceptance. To the soothing feel of a hand against his back. There could be no promises – they had both outgrown them. But both Jon and Sansa too, had known what it means to touch the bottom of loneliness’ well. What she could give him – what she was trying to give him now – was the promise that neither would have to fall to that place and be alone ever again. That she would not leave him to hurt alone.

That too, was something Jon hasn’t felt in so long he’d almost forgotten it.


	5. its perfect blue

Sansa was a Princess of the North, one of the Queen’s ladies, and someone who did not enjoy idleness. Whenever Jon looked at her, she was about something. Her time is not her own, Jon knew that. Nobody could tell what _exactly_ she did though. Most people thought she truly loved birds and hawking and was dedicated to then. The truth of that was a little different. Jon worried when he thought of it, but at the same time, her skill awed him.

And yet, for all her busy says, that morning after Sansa walked out of the crypts with him, she insisted they sit and eat something together before parting ways. She had barely touched her own food though, preferring to divert his attention with conversation. She’d stayed with him a little bit after Arya and Rickon came down, but then left them to their games as she went about her own chores. Later Jon would realize that she’d stayed just for his sake, so that he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts when she’d seen for herself how they had turned so dark. Sansa had become someone would never leave any of her family alone, if she could help it.

She’d been so careful in diverting the darker shades of his mood, not allowing the mire of his thoughts too pull him too far down. He hadn’t noticed her intention at all, did not even remember what they spoke of, really. All he knew was that the night inside of him had been silent, because she had been there.

If he didn’t trust her with his life - if it hadn’t been _Sansa_ \- Jon might have dreaded someone capable of such gentle steering.

After she left him, he didn’t see her for the rest of the day. Admittedly, Jon was busy himself. Work in Winterfell was not scarce. Construction of some parts of the castle was still underway and anyone with an eye for building would be able to see that Robb is not just repairing the walls, but fortifying them. They all know there was a war coming.

Jon hoped they were ready when it got here.

He cut out a part of the day, once every few days, to spar with Arya and Robb, taking turns with his brother to teach Rickon too. The rest of the time was spent meeting with the other representatives of the houses to speak of the situation at the Wall, he sent with Robb, talking of more private – and more secret – things.

It was only once night had fallen and supper come and gone, that Jon saw Sansa again. He was walking to his room, and he noticed the door of hers open, heard Arya’s low voice coming from inside it.

Without even meaning to, he smiled. His feet led them to his sisters door before Jon had ever made up his mind to go there.

He could already see the bed untouched bed from the corridor, so Arya and Sansa, he thought, must be sharing each other’s company before sleep. The thought warmed him. He did not wish to disturb them, but he also wanted to see them and the way things had been between them these past two weeks made him think, perhaps his sisters might like to spend some time with him as well. Arya was certainly more expressive about it, but there was no mistaking Sansa’s affection either.

And Jon very much wanted to thank her for that morning, though he still hadn’t found the right words, or even a way to express what for that did not make his collar feel hot with embarrassment.

He hoped  that perhaps he would not even need to say the words. Perhaps she’d understand, as she seemed to understand most things these days, and he had but to hold her hand once before parting ways for her to know how grateful he was for that bit of kindness she had shown him.

Sansa’s room was not big. She had chosen one of the smaller rooms in favor of being close to Arya and Rickon. So the moment Jon got to the threshold, he had but to turn his head to the left, towards the hearth to see them.

Arya was there, yes. She was sprawled on one of Sansa’s armchairs in a decidedly unladylike fashion, talking in a low voice to Ghost, curled up close by. Close by Sansa, who sat on the floor over some furs with her legs crossed under her, hands folded in her lap and her back to the fire as her long hair dried in loose waves around her shoulders.

“Jon!” Arya almost shouted, making Jon cringe and smile at the same time. She jumped to her feet. “Thank the gods, I was getting bored out of my mind.”

“Lower your voice, Arya.” Jon advised, but he was frowning down at his other sister though, and her unusual silence.

Arya snorted. “She doesn’t care. Come in.”

Jon didn’t dare, because Sansa had yet to look at him. Perhaps he had offended her… She was already dressed for bed: he could see her shift peaking from beneath her thick white robe and that made Jon inch backwards instead of taking Arya’s invitation. He suddenly felt foolish for having taken this kind of liberty.

But a closer look at Sansa’s face stopped him from doing that too.

Sansa had always been good at being still, but this was different. Jon had seen _this_ stillness before. Not that he needed to recognize it to know what she was doing: her eyes were white, her irises as blue as chirps of ever-lasting ice gone.

She was not here, his sister.

 Jon felt the bite of worry. “How long has she been like this?”

Arya rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t worry. She knows what she’s doing.”

But she was leaving and that struck the match of panic in Jon too.

“Where are you going?”

Arya was already at the door, jumping on one foot as she put on the other boot.

“To get something to eat. I’m _starving_. We missed dinner.”

“I noticed. Why-”

“It took longer than she thought it would. And she doesn’t like being alone when she’s like this.”

No, Jon imagined she would not. But of Sansa’s fear at being helpless was perhaps more accurately measured in the fact that she wanted both Arya and Ghost with her, as she disappeared inside her little birds.  

“I’ll bring something up for Sansa too, don’t worry.” Arya added with a crooked smile.

Jon might have rolled his eyes at her, had it not been true that he was just about say that. He would have asked Arya to send one of Sansa’s ladies up with the food, or even one of the kitchen girls, but he remembered none of them were allowed on these three corridors of Winterfeell after a certain hour. As Jon took his boots off and sat down in front of Sansa, mirroring her position, he understood why. She probably didn’t want anyone to see her when she was like this.

But then, why the open door?

She always liked doors to be kept open. Perhaps too many had been close against her for too long.

He didn’t know. There was much about Sansa that he did not understand. She was free with her kindness, and sometimes Jon thought she was as starved for warmth as he felt, but she was very reticent when it came to her own self.

So Jon sat. And he waited.

She came back to herself with a blink and a sharply drawn breath, as if she had been held underwater too long and was just now resurfacing.

She scrambled back from him, eyes wide with fear and maybe unseeing or maybe not. Jon would not have touched her, knowing that would make her even more afraid, but the open hearth was just behind her.

“Sansa.”

She blinked and then her eyes focused. Jon let go of her hand immediately, but she didn’t let him. She kept breathing as if air was scarce and she’d been running miles, but her eyes shone and there was a smile forming on her face.

“Jon.” She chuckled, breathless, her fingers tightening around his before she let go, hands fluttering around her face, pushing back stray hair. “What are you doing here? Where’s Arya?”

“She was hungry.” Jon explained. He didn’t know why the thread of nervousness was pulling at him. “I didn’t mean to intrude.”

He knew his curtsies were stilted at best, and a lifetime ago she might have minded, but now she smiled bright

“You didn’t.”

But Jon was already up and ready to say goodnight. Sansa’s face fell.

She looked up, following his retreat. ( _it felt like one_ )

“Are you leaving?”

Jon felt like he was moving a bit slower than usual but he knew he didn’t imagine the subtle tilt of disappointment in her voice.

“I should.”

A crinkle appeared between her eyebrows.

“Not at all.” And then a smile, smaller, a bit more unsure than before. “Wait for Arya with me. Let’s have a cup of wine together, I haven’t seen you all day since breakfast.”

Jon hesitated. He felt so very out of place all of a sudden. But then Sansa smiled wider, her eyes a bit clearer and not so overwhelmed as before. She looked at him as young as 12 to him then and it gave Jon a pang that made it difficult to breathe.

“Do you mind if I stay down here for a while?” She asked him as stretched her legs out and leaned back on her hands, wiggled her wool-clad toes. “I get a bit numb sometimes, after.”

Jon answered by sitting down cross-legged on the space next to her and handing her the cup he’d filled beforehand. He didn’t take any for himself.

“Arya said she’d bring some dinner for you up.”

Why were words so difficult all of a sudden?

“Good. I get hungry after too. I wonder why.” She asked herself absentmindedly as she felt her hair to see if it had dried enough to braid back. The flickering light of the fire and the candles lit the back of her hair, made them look like ropes of fire. She pulled all of it over one shoulder and started braiding.

“Where were you?” He was curious, but had never asked her before. He hunted with Ghost sometimes – Ghost who slinked up close and laid himself just at Sansa’s feet, his huge head almost at her lap – but Sansa flew. She could go so much farther.

Her eyes shone as she told him of Last Hearth. She liked this. Sometimes Jon thought she liked it too much, but as she pulled her knees to her chest and spoke of secrets she had heard and things no other human could ever know, she was lucid and controlled. There was strategy to her flights, to where she went and why. All the secrets she brought back.

Jon looked at his sister - his cousin, family – from the tip of her head to the tip of her toes. He’d never known such a soft-looking predator.

But he did know her likeness. He’d seen it in other women before, women that he’d thought once could not be more different from his courteous sister who didn’t like to dirty her hems. Lonely, lovely and lethal creatures, all in different ways.

“What about you? What did you do today?”

It sounded almost like a tease.

“My day was tedious.” And tiresome. Too many people around him and too much politics made him miss the wall sometimes.

Sansa absentmindedly reached out for Ghost, threading her fingers into the fur at his neck. It was by following her hand that he noticed how… unusually _clean_ Ghost looked.

Arya bounded in just as Jon asked after it.

“We gave him a bath today.” She declared, as she set the tray down.

“Thank you.” Sansa said as she reached for the bread. Arya nodded and then plopped herself on the sofa and her feet on the table close by it.

Sansa scrunched her nose but said nothing.

“You gave Ghost a bath?”

Arya laughed. “And he stayed so still too. You should have seen him Jon, sitting so well behaved as we soaped him up.”

Jon couldn’t imagine it. It sounded like a jape he might laugh at. He’d had never known Ghost to ever stay still enough unless it was to eat something.

Sansa just shrugged as if it was normal and passed a piece of cheese to Ghost too, who took it from her hand as gently as if he had lips.

She didn’t feed him to quell his hanger. That little piece of cheese could do little against it. She just liked to share.

“Well if he means to sleep in here tonight he can’t very well stink can he?” Sansa said directly to Ghost, who just licked her hand.

Jon didn’t know what to say to that.

“Where did you find a basin big enough to fit him?”

“We didn’t. We took him to the godswood, in the hotsprings.”

 “He was very well mannered.” Sansa reintegrated, turning her smile to him.

Jon huffed. “That’s new.”

Unheard of, more like.

But Jon could believe it that even Ghost would stand very still and let himself be groomed by his two sisters. After all, he’d always been a clever beast.

x

Arya didn’t stay long. But Jon did. She didn’t even have to ask him more than once.

She didn’t have to tell him that she could never really sleep well after she’d taste the cold winds of high above. That her dreams would disquiet her and that she was afraid to be alone after.

She didn’t have to say half a thing, but he stayed anyway. Jon could be kind that way.

She watched him as carefully as she watched everyone, but there was so much more that she wanted to know about him. At first she dismissed it as the bite of conscience: she simply did not know him and wanted to, to make up for slights she feels weight heavy between them. He never made a mention of them, dismissed her apology when she’d tried. Dismissed it with a strong hug the second time, better than he ever could have with words.

There was this look on his face sometimes, if he stared at the flames. A look of devastation, or the echo of it, at least. A look she has seen before, in a dream she had forgotten… that is, until she saw it grace his face again.

That night, she thought maybe she could ask him. His eyes lifted from the flames and on her face, and as simple as that - a smile came to him, small and true.

“What?”

Sansa leaned forward, her chin on top of her knees. “What do you think of, when you look into the fire jon?”

The question caught him off guard, she could tell. He blinked and for a moment hardened. Sansa knew that reaction. It used to be immediate in her as well: when other pry, you ice yourself over. But it was gone so soon – Jon was quick to remind himself that this was the sister who loveed him. His eyes soften and he smiles, sadly this time. She took his hand in hers, because she knew that smile.

_Loss…_

“I think about many things.” He said softly, but it was only a tease. They both knew that was no answer. As they both knew she already knew the truth. It was so plain in his eyes.

He’d wanted her to see.

“What was her name?”

She asked without inflection or judgment and he felt it.

“Ygritte. She is long gone now.” he paused and that small smile that belonged to the memory of this woman, this Ygrite he’d loved, came back on his lips again.

“She used to have red hair, just like yours. Beyond the wall, they call it kissed by fire.” And now when he smiled, it was not because of the past, but because of whom he was looking at in that moment. “They say its lucky.”

Sansa felt her lips curve up. “Do they?”

“Obviously not enough… but you’re here now, aren’t you? Maybe they have the right of it up there.”

Sansa's smile widened fractionally. "Yes, perhaps they do. Sometimes at least."

Hair did not matter of course. Luck could not keep you alive for long. There was only so much chance could push for you. You had to fight, you had to claw, resist, and never give up.

But she liked the sound of that. _'kissed by fire_ '

It sounded fierce.


End file.
